Think about it. Trump “backs” a guy who has an uphill battle against the guy who the Russians are backing. The T administration cannot continue to openly support everything Russia wants so this is a no brainer. Fake support with no actual support for the losing opposition so when he loses, it looks like Trump isnt aligning with Russian interests when in fact by doing nothing and decided this was a good PR stunt to pretend that he is not.
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Where are you getting that it is a government sockpuppet?
That article I posted is basically just re-reporting this one: Juan Guaidó’s Policy Proposals: “The Venezuela to Come” or the Venezuela that has already been? | NACLA
The source is this guy:
Barry Cannon is a Lecturer in Politics at Maynooth University, Ireland. His research is primarily centred on Latin American politics, with particular expertise on Peru, Venezuela and Central America.
So someone who has dedicated their life to studying Latin American politics. What exactly is the more credible alternative to that?
Reading that wiki article, first “thing” I’m noticing is “a lot” of “scare quotes”. So let’s paraphrase what’s being said about the organization:
Venezuelanalysis.com says it is a “project of Venezuela Analysis, Inc., which is registered as a non-profit organization in New York State and of the Fundación para la Justicia Económica Global , which is registered in Caracas, Venezuela”.
The website’s founder Gregory Wilpert has described this perspective as “clearly pro-Bolivarian Revolution, but also critical of some aspects from a leftist perspective”.[1]
According to Venezuelanalysis.com, “as of early 2008 its writers are all working on the site from their homes in various places in Venezuela, with volunteers contributing from around world.”[9] The website also lists contributors from England, Australia, and the US with a mix of activist and academic credentials, which have included authors Nikolas Kozloff, who periodically contributes to the site,[12] and Eva Golinger, who was a team member through 2017.[13] The staff as of 2019 are listed on the website as Gregory Wilpert, Jan Kühn, Rachael Boothroyd, Lucas Koerner, Jeanette Charles, Katrina Kozarek, Paul Dobson, Cira Pascual Marquina and Ricardo Vaz.
So the founder is a leftist activist. Super surprising that the founder and journalists working for an organization with a mission of providing transparent and honest reporting that acknowledges its stances would be leftists.
On a side note this is a pet peeve of mine. How come leftists are invalid as soon as they’re sincere about their views in public? Like… either leftists are considered to be hiding their agenda, or obviously biased / making everything about their politics, but then we never say that about centrists or neoliberals and every fuckwit economic professor that reinvents taxes but privatized. They’re allowed to do whatever they want and it’s “just how it is” / “normal”.
In 2007, Wilpert stated the site had received “some funding” from the Venezuelan government’s Ministry of Culture, in addition to accepting “grassroots donations”.[
…as of April 2014, the website said that Venezuelanalysis “depend[s] 100% on reader donations and receive[s] no funding from any governments”.[9]
So the department tasked with promoting arts and humanities gave a non-profit news organization money to get started, which now supports itself through grassroot donations. Like, isn’t that literally NPR?
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Which part? And what, specifically, do you have a problem with in the items you pulled to show?
Hamstringing other business sectors besides the OIL one, is one of the things that has gotten them in the position they are in. I suppose keeping the oil nationalized makes sense, but the extent other businesses were nationalized doesn’t make sense.
They are going to need outside investment to help pull them out of where they are. Past policies made it so they couldn’t even import necessities legally, leading to a massive black market where things like toilet paper were at obscene prices. So not sure what your issue with that policy is.
This is probably the best thing to support your insinuation of fascism. Though more police is coupled with civilian programs, street lighting, etc. So that sounds good. The problem is they are having a huge issue with lawlessness among desperate people. It certainly isn’t perfect.
When everything is on fire, perhaps focus on putting it out and then we can talk about making their policies more fair. Right now there is no concern for inequality. You could say when things were good Chavez’s programs did address this some. But even while they were elevating the poor some, they were elevating the rich even more. Part of their problems now is the fact the elites have fleeced the government covers and fled with the money.
To be clear, not sure of Guaido is the best solution, but the current situation is getting more and more unbearable by the day.
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Fleece covers sound good to me at the moment. My office is cold. 
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You mentioned fire, and I realized the perfect response to this:
On a side note,
They are going to need outside investment to help pull them out of where they are. Past policies made it so they couldn’t even import necessities legally, leading to a massive black market where things like toilet paper were at obscene prices. So not sure what your issue with that policy is.
Step Eleven: Make the Economy Scream. Venezuela has faced harsh US sanctions since 2014, when the US Congress started down this road. The next year, US President Barack Obama declared Venezuela a ‘threat to national security’. The economy started to scream. In recent days, the United States and the United Kingdom brazenly stole billions of dollars of Venezuelan money, placed the shackles of sanctions on its only revenue generating sector (oil) and watched the pain flood through the country. This is what the US did to Iran and this is what they did to Cuba. The UN says that the US sanctions on Cuba have cost the small island $130 billion. Venezuela lost $6 billion for the first year of Trump’s sanctions, since they began in August 2017. More is to be lost as the days unfold. No wonder that the United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy says that ‘sanctions which can lead to starvation and medical shortages are not the answer to the crisis in Venezuela’. He said that sanctions are ‘not a foundation for the peaceful settlement of disputes’. Further, Jazairy said, ‘I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela’. He called for ‘compassion’ for the people of Venezuela.
Sanctions are a way to do economic violence to a country and then blame their government, and they are considered to be inhumane since they only hurt the poor / working class. It is difficult to say how much of Venezuela’s current situation exactly is due to sanctions, but it is easy to say the US is making the situation worse and it is easy to say it is disingenuous to blame the Maduro government while sanctions stand.
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One could make the case that they have voted for the existing government, while Guido didnt stand and was not even the leader of his current faction.
One might also make the case that the constitution has no provision for Guiado to hold office. They need the Supreme Court to make that determination.
Either way round Guaido upped the stakes by declaring a military coup. However if there was really a military coup underway, he would have broadcast from inside the airforce base, not outside it.
Which makes it look like the standard “color revolution”. The idea being for deaths to delegitimize the current government. I doubt they will fall for it. They have even let Guaido wander around the country unmolested for ages. What kind of repressive dictatorship allows the US nominated "interim"president towander around looking dumb and pointless?
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La guerra nunca es una opción / War’s never an option:
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Which other businesses do you refer to?
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Nope. The current government was not voted in as the whole process was illegitimate.
The Venezuelan constitution does state that Guaido had the ability to step in as interim president
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@Grey_Devil, I have arbitrarily deemed your citizenship wherever you are is objectively illegitimate since your birth was not observed by my friends over in Japan that I asked to stay there so as to not legitimize your illegitimate birth. Therefore I’m allowed to take your stuff by my interpretation of “it isn’t a crime if it belongs to nobody” to mean it’s okay to take your stuff if you’re not a citizen, as defined by me and my friends and only us.
That’s basically the logic being used to say Guaido is totally the president, actually.
Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution gives the National Assembly the power to declare a national president’s “abandonment” of the office. In which case, the president of the National Assembly can serve as an interim national president, until presidential elections are held. The inconvenient truth is that Maduro has shown no inclination to abandon his post, and the constitution says no such thing.
In fact, the grounds for replacing a president are very clearly laid out in the first paragraph of Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution and do not include fraudulent or illegitimate election, which is what the cabal has been claiming. In the convoluted logic of the US government and its epigones, if the people elect someone the cabal doesn’t like, the election is by definition fraudulent and the democratically elected winner is ipso facto a dictator.
I think the question of why the coup is seemingly failing begins with some simple facts about the Bolivaran Revolution. From the wiki on Chávez’ Econ policy (which I won’t link to because it is quite fleshed out with neolib bs):
In 1999, when Chávez took office, unemployment was 14.5 percent; for 2011 it had declined to 7.8 percent.[4] Poverty also decreased significantly, dropping by nearly 50 percent since the oil strike, with extreme poverty dropping by over 70 percent.[4]
These numbers get to the heart of why, while Maduro may not be terribly popular, the Revolution itself has significant support.
The various socialist/communist orgs in Venezuela that I check in on frequently are often critical of Maduro, and many are indeed organizing against him.
That Guaído is incapable of earning the support of other significant anti Maduro groups is pretty telling to me.
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Yeah, I should be clear that Maduro can be criticized from the left, but that doesn’t mean Guaido is a better alternative.
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Ha. They just blocked CNN.
“CNN has been taken off the air in Venezuela by the government.”
“DirecTV, Net Uno, Intercable, and Telefónica all received orders from Venezuela’s government regulator Conatel to block CNN.”
Can’t have images of people getting crushed by personnel carriers or shot by government forces getting out to the World now can we?
Sounds distinctly like a request from el trumpo.
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I think this is one of those Alien vs. Predator situations where all you can really do is hope some of the human civilians will survive.
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One could make the case that they have voted for the existing government, while Guido didnt stand and was not even the leader of his current faction.
He was elected, first as a deputy in the National Assembly in the 2015 election, and then as President of the assembly in 2018. He only assumed the role of interim president, which was approved by the assembly, and is allowed for under the constitution, in order to return the country to constitutional order.
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Whatever he is, he’s probably going to have to make at least one outside deal with the devil for help to reboot Venezuela’s economy. (The US un-freezing assets, if nothing else.)
Everyone is gathering around to … make sure he has a pen.
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The Venezuelan Supreme Court disagreed. So did the international observers. Wasnt Jimmy Carter one of them?
Re the Constitution, the article in question (233?) says that if the President is unavailable, the leader of the assembly can become interim President. However it is the Supreme Court which makes the decision on the “availability” of the President.
Worth noting that the Supreme Court disputes the legality of this National Assembly.
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The Supreme Court has the role of deciding whether the President is “unavailable”. If it is decided, then the interim president has 30 days to hold an election. My concern is that Guaido has no intention of holding that election within 30 days. This article doesn’t really seem a justification for forcing a sitting president out.
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Yeah, remember when they scoffed that the vast majority of Crimeans voted to join Russia? But then surveys sponsored by the US, German and Canadian governments found that was right.
Very few media covered that.
There is also a distorted lens on Catalonia.
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My problem with Gregory Wilpert isn’t that he’s a leftist, but that he has been closely tied to the venezuelan government for years. He was director for the government funded television channel TeleSUR in 2014-15 during Maduro. He is also maried to Carol Delgado Arria who was the maduro ambassador in Ecuador until 2018 (she might still be, but as far as i can see she was expelled from equador). so basically i won’t give him or his publication the benefit of the doubt.
I’ll grant you that Barry Cannon seems to be a legit source, although i don’t think i agree with his analysis of Guaidós plan pais. I’m sure he knows the details better than me though. Having read his article a couple of times now it does strike me that your original call to “read between the lines” didn’t really lead to any dark and stunning revelations.
from what i’ve read Guaidó Basically wants
- a Professional police forces to replace and curtail maduro supported paramilitary units
- allow privately businesses in order to restart the economy
- To give all citizen over 18 an equal share of public oil profits. This is the section that you and Barry seem to take special offence to. while i agree that these kind of public goods ideally should go to those who needs it the most. I think it is disingenious at best to draw any parallels to ethnic or political cleansing (which is what you do when you invoke fascism).
Overall i’m just perplexed by the notion that “what if the new guy has fascist tendencies” is a valid concern when the sitting government won’t hold elections, is rewriting the constitution exclude the influence of the national asssembly and who is having tanks run over unarmed protesters.
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